There are many scams with different modi operandi under the fabric of society. On Tuesday (Oct 9), netizen Hafifi Hafidz exposed a new kind of scam going around which involved online purchases.

Hafidz said the cheaters would leverage on online “scheduled payment” method to swindle sellers into delivering the items after receiving the bank receipts as proofs of money transfer. What the sellers didn’t know was that the transfer was scheduled to be made three days after. The receipt didn’t indicate it was a scheduled payment and yet it showed a “SUCCESSFUL” verification.

Here’s the detailed breakdown of how the scam is played out in 13 steps, shared by Hafidz in his viral post with over 13,000 shares:

ONLINE PAYMENT SCAM TECHNIQUES

1. Create SCHEDULED PAYMENT

2. Select the payment date on the coming 3 days
Example: The buyer notifies the bank on October 9, 2018. But when the online payment is made, he selects SCHEDULED PAYMENT and selects the transfer date on October 12, 2018.

3. That means the seller will receive the payment on the 12th of October. Not 9th October.

4. After completion of the transaction, the receipt will be ‘screenshot’ and the buyer will send the receipt to the seller as proof of payment.

5. Here is where the problem starts, the receipt issued by the bank is the same as ‘normal transfer’. No flaws. It does not indicate that the transaction is SCHEDULED TRANSFER.

6. It really does not help when the receipt still shows the word SUCCESSFUL.

7. The seller then receives the receipt. It looks authentic and immediately posts the item without checking the account balance.

8. When a buyer gets a ‘tracking’ number for the item, he will then cancel the SCHEDULED PAYMENT.

9. That means the seller has been tricked once the item has been sent for courier.